Moscow:
The Kremlin on Wednesday sounded the alarm more than the theft of sensitive gear from a secretive “doomsday plane” created for the country’s leading command in occasion of a nuclear attack.
The interior ministry mentioned police in the southern city of Taganrog had been alerted that 1 million rubles ($13,600) worth of gear was stolen from an Ilyushin Il-80 plane at an airfield.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the breach as an “emergency situation” and vowed that “measures will be taken to prevent this from happening in the future.”
The interior ministry did not specify what was stolen but mentioned that investigators had been dispatched to the scene.
The port city of Taganrog, far more than 1,one hundred kilometres (700 miles) south of Moscow, is dwelling to Beriev Aircraft Company, a struggling state-controlled enterprise.
Both the interior ministry and Beriev declined to comment when reached by AFP.
But the Kremlin-friendly REN-Television tv channel reported earlier this week that radio gear was taken from an Il-80 plane that was undergoing upkeep at Taganrog.
Thieves opened the aircraft’s cargo hatch and shoe and fingerprints have been discovered inside the aircraft, the channel mentioned, adding that Beriev reported the theft to police final week.
The channel mentioned that 12 people today had been questioned as portion of the probe that was produced public on Wednesday.
Citing a supply, it mentioned officials with access to the airfield could be behind the higher-profile theft.
‘Classified information leak’
The robbed plane is a single of 4 flying command centres constructed to evacuate the president and other leading officials and challenge commands in case of a nuclear explosion.
Based on the Ilyushin Il-86 jetliner, the initial such Russian plane is believed to have flown in 1985.
The aircraft are created to sustain electromagnetic pulses and are practically windowless to protect against the crew and passengers from becoming blinded by the effects of a nuclear blast.
Military specialists mentioned the theft was no ordinary incident and underscored the logistics of guarding hugely classified hardware.
Military professional Mikhail Khodarenok mentioned that the Soviet-era radio gear from the Il-80 was most probably targeted for its scrap worth — a prevalent occurence in Russia.
Writing in the Gazeta.ru news portal, Khodarenok mentioned the incident was substantial simply because it constituted a “highly classified data leak.”
“Heads will roll,” mentioned Vasily Kashin, a military professional at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
But he cautioned it was crucial not to exaggerate the national safety significance of “theft of old Soviet-era metal scrap”.
“We don’t know the condition of that plane,” Kashin told AFP.
Another miliary professional, Pavel Felgenhauer, mentioned the loss of the Soviet-era gear was probably to have rendered the plane unusable.
Last year, Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Krivoruchko mentioned work was beneath way to modernise the Il-80s.
The United States operates comparable flying command centres which are named E-4B Nightwatch and primarily based on the Boeing 747s.
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